Slashdot Mirror
NASA Report Advocates Switch to Open Source
vortimax writes "A new technical report from the NASA Ames Research Center advocates the adoption of Open Source Software internally by NASA for some projects. The paper also proposes modifications to NASA's "external software release" policies to allow OSS and proposes the use of the Mozilla Public License as the license of choice for NASA software."
Here we go
Publications Incorporating U. S. Government Works
Works by the U. S. Government are not eligible for U. S. copyright protection. For works published on and after March 1, 1989, the previous notice requirement for works consisting primarily of one or more U. S. Government works has been eliminated. However, use of a notice on such a work will defeat a claim of innocent infringement as previously described provided the notice also includes a statement that identifies either those portions of the work in which copyright is claimed or those portions that constitute U. S. Government material.
Example: © 2002 Jane Brown. Copyright claimed in Chapters 7-10, exclusive of U. S. Government maps
Copies of works published before March 1, 1989, that consist primarily of one or more works of the U. S. Government should have a notice and the identifying statement.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Of course, NASA does office stuff, networking, etc... I guess "some projects" would have to be highly specific. But if you are gonna help NASA, who wants to help the secretary?
Ever work in a large software shop? I didn't think so.
Any operation of any size at all generates lots of software tools and libraries that are more or less generic.
In addition, NASA does lots of Scientific Visualization, materials engineering, simulations, data acquisition and other stuff that is not directly related to embedded flight control systems. Lot's of good science that's not just "Office Stuff".
I'm probably missing more than a few, but just these examples are things that could be opened up.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
First of all open source is not GPL. Second promoting the use of it for nonessecntial stuff sort of makes sense, and chances are people are alreading using it and know it. TCP/IP comes to mind some parts of the internet to.
If you just cast a magical spell "gpl mpl bsd apache" on google.com, you get:
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/expo/lw-thurTry this page.
May we never see th
WARNING, DANGER WILL ROBINSON
This software is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazadours enviroments requiring fail-safe peformance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air trafic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which case the failure of the software could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or enviromental damage --Microsofts typical phrasing quoted loosly from "Java support" segment
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
For example, the SPICE library or various treecode programs for n-body simulations. So this is nothing new, though it is certainly welcome.
So it's really great that some people within NASA are making a more formal push for open source software, and are even discussing releasing some of their own, but open source within NASA is hardly new!
But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure. She declined to reveal if the firm received identical reports from other users in the country.
You can't complain about Microsoft FUD when the Anti-Microsoft FUD is just as bad.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
If memory serves there was a big stink about NASA (Johnson Space Center Houston) switching their administrative desktops from Macs to Windows just a few years ago. If they kept all of the Mac hardware they could probably ressurect them as Linux terminals.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.
Unfortunately this seems to be a hoax:
CNET reports that, contrary to rumours that the BMW that trapped a Thai minister inside earlier this week was "the famously glitchy BMW 745i car, and its Windows CE-powered iDrive car computer", it was, according to a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand, the 10-year old BMW 520i model that "suffered a simple electronic failure".
(from Looswire)
Sailing over the event horizon
that Dan Goldin, a.k.a. "the man who replaced all the Macs" at NASA would stand for it. He is FIRMLY in the Microsoft camp, and in 1997 appeared as a booster in Microsoft advertisements for Windows NT 4.0.
Goldin replaced perfectly good I.T. infrastructure with Microsoft equipment in the name of standardization; it says a lot about the entrenched bullshit beaurocracy at NASA that he rose so meteorically through the ranks at the Space Administration.
Obviously, they'd have to adapt the kernel to suit their needs, since most of the hardware on the shuttle is custom designed and built for it. Under the GPL they would have to release any changes they make to the kernel back into the public domain.
No, they wouldn't. This is just FUD. See the GPL FAQ:
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. [...] If you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL
They'd only have to make the source public if they were also distributing the customised kernel. Chances are, they're only going to use their executable in this custom hardware of theirs.
I also worked at NASA doing astrophysics and bearly even saw a windows machine the whole time. A few individuals (mostly those who did outreach work for the mostly windows using public) has Windows and I think there was one public one for running Powerpoint. :) Other than that is was all Solaris/SunOS/Digital Unix for older computers and almost exclusively Linux and MacOS for newer computers. And most of the ftp and web servers there will also running on some flavor of *nix.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
(1) I am no karma whore
(2) Check with these folks
I heard somewhere that NASA is using Python for some stuff. Good choice.
You mean this:
"NASA is using Python to implement a CAD/CAE/PDM repository and model management, integration, and transformation system which will be the core infrastructure for its next generation collaborative engineering environment. We chose Python because it provides maximum productivity, code that's clear and easy to maintain, strong and extensive (and growing!) libraries, and excellent capabilities for integration with other applications on any platform. All of these characteristics are essential for building efficient, flexible, scalable, and well-integrated systems, which is exactly what we need. Python has met or exceeded every requirement we've had," said Steve Waterbury, Software Group Leader, NASA STEP Testbed.
From http://www.python.org/Quotes.html.